The Case of the Solid Key

by Anthony Boucher

  “Somewhere. Have I told you how I met Sarah?”

  “No. All I know is she showed up at Joe’s with you devotedly in tow and apparently not even knowing her name. How did all this start?”

  So Norman told him about Monday night in the drugstore, and Maureen’s explanation. Fergus listened attentively and rose to pace as the story ended. “Maureen and Crews,” he muttered. “That gives me the screwiest damned idea I’ve had since I flunked my first murder case. You know, Norm, I may wind up owing you two hundred and seventy dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “The usual ten per cent.”

  “And another thing about Crews,” said Norman, puzzled, “the more I think the more it seems to me—”

  The phone rang. “I’ll take it,” said Fergus. “It’s probably … Oh, hello, Andy. Fergus speaking …”

  Norman leaned forward avidly, but nothing was to be made of Fergus’ grunting responses. “Any news?” he demanded as the Irishman replaced the phone in its cradle.

  “Not about Sarah, no. No time to get results on that yet. Nor about solid key dies. But some other news. Andy thought I’d like to keep posted.”

  “Yes?”

  “Item: the false teeth check. They found Carruthers’ dentist and he positively identifies the set. So that doesn’t leave much doubt as to identity.”

  “Shucks,” said Norman.

  “And item: Hilary’s prints are on record, and under another name.”

  “What!”

  “You would scorn my hunches, would you? Though he doesn’t turn out to be what you’d call a professional after all. But three years ago a young man named Herman Varney was held on charges of negligent homicide. He was driving a car while drunk, swerved into a lamppost, and killed his passenger. But the homicide charges weren’t pressed. It would’ve been pretty hard to get a jury to convict a man of killing his own mother.”

  “His mother? God, that’s terrible.”

  “It isn’t nice. I guess Hilary’s been through a bit of hell. He served the sentence for drunk driving, was released, and there’s no further record on him. Bad mess.” Fergus regretfully watched Norman finish the coffee. “Look, Norm. What you need is some exercise to clear your head and take your mind off our troubles. How’s about walking out to the Y to settle your breakfast and having a swim and a sun bath?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Sun baths help. I’ve got some heavy thinking to do before I take another step … The goddamned amateur trick …!” he muttered to himself

  “Who’s an amateur?”

  “Hilary. Changing his name from Herman Varney to Hilary Vane. The old same-initial stunt. Any self-respecting criminal knows the best dodge is a completely new name. Look at Willard Beemis.”

  “The Randolph estate manager? But nobody knows what he changed his name to. He just vanished from human ken.”

  “Unless I’m off the track altogether,” said Fergus, “he changed it to Rupert Carruthers.”

  What is technically known as the solarium at the Hollywood Y.M.C.A. is a bare space of roof, reached by a perpendicular iron ladder, with slanting green planks to stretch out on. There are no regulations as to clothing, and you can enjoy the sun in complete and blissful nakedness, acquiring a tan without keeping an absurd facsimile of white trunks about your middle.

  The swim had cleared Norman’s head magnificently, though the ladder was still a bit difficult to negotiate. The roof was empty when they arrived.

  “Early yet for the crowd,” Fergus explained. “Now stretch yourself out and relax while Papa thinks.”

  Norman closed his eyes. Fergus was right; this was a way to forget all your troubles, all corpses and keys, all policies and players, even Sarah. The sun became the only real thing in existence, the sun bathing him with waves of heat as tangible as wind or water, the sun cleansing and purging his body and mind, the sun …

  A voice floated distantly into his sun-gleaming vacuum. A faintly familiar voice saying, “We can talk up here. It’s always empty at this time of day.”

  “Quick,” Fergus whispered. “Put your towel over your face.”

  Confusedly, Norman obeyed. The voice drew nearer. “Damn!” it breathed. “There’s people. Well, come on over here in the corner.” Two sets of footsteps crossed the roof, one lithe and agile, the other slow and limping.

  Norman felt the tension of the man next to him. He knew that Fergus was straining himself to hear the whispered conversation in the corner. He too tried his best to eavesdrop, but only phrases came.

  “I tell you, I know more than you think.” This was still the first voice, familiar and yet strange. “I know that this isn’t his first …” The last word was all but inaudible. Had it been “murder”?

  “Then why not go to the police, my dear boy?” This was an old voice, fit to go with those limping footsteps, an old and oily voice. Norman recognized it now.

  He could not hear the reply to that question. A shout from the handball court below drowned it out. Then he heard the old voice say, “I still do not see your part in this.”

  “I don’t expect you to. I’m doing what I have to do. I don’t expect anyone eles to understand that.” Now he knew this voice too. It was Hilary’s; not the melodious fluting with which Hilary usually embellished conversation, but the taut strain with which Hilary, prop gun in hand, had said, “Outside!”

  The old voice made some unintelligible protest. Then followed a sentence from Hilary, of which Norman could catch only the end: “… even know how it was done.”

  Both voices were silent for a long while. Then the old voice began, “My boy …”

  Hilary broke in with a sharp whisper. The old voice faltered and said, “Indeed! Then …”

  And once again the two sets of footsteps crossed the roof. The door to the iron ladder opened and closed. Fergus sat up. “You can take off your whiskers, Jack Dalton. All is discovered.”

  Norman took the towel from his face and blinked at the sun. “They recognized us?”

  “I should have thought. I’ve run into Hilary here at the Y before. We’ve swum and showered together.”

  “Well?”

  “Hilary has a good eye. I could use that lad as an assistant. See my appendix scar—what an odd shape it is, like a bell? He must have spotted that.”

  “But what did all that conversation mean?” Despite the sun, Norman felt chill.

  Fergus rose to his feet. “That is what we’re going to find out.”

  Norman hesitated before the iron ladder. His head did not feel so splendidly cleared as it had. “It’s a long way down.”

  “It’s easy if you go backward. Look. You take hold of the rails in both hands like this. Then gently but deftly lowering your feet to the first rung, you—”

  Fergus’ speech stopped abruptly. His foot had no sooner touched that first rung than it shot off into space. His brown body hurtled downward, his hands groping for the rails. Just before he struck the bottom, he caught hold of the ladder and contrived to break his fall a little. For an instant he stood erect. Then his right foot gave under him, and he sank back against the wall, his face twisted with pain.

  All this had happened in a space of seconds. Norman hastily started after him, but Fergus’ voice called a halt. “Watch out …! Soap … Wipe rung …!”

  Norman paused, knelt, and peered at the ladder. The top rung had obviously been thoroughly rubbed with a cake of soap.

  They took a bus back to the O’Breen bungalow, where they collected the yellow roadster. Norman drove, while Fergus nursed his swollen ankle, adeptly taped by a Y attendant, and swore in the noblest and least printable tradition of his race.

  “Of course,” he admitted, “it could have been an accident. People always take their towels along up there. Sometimes they take soap too, and accidents can happen. But that is just too damned much of a coincidence.”

  “You could have been killed,” said Norman seriously.

  “Couldn’t I just! You
may have felt funny with a gun pointing at you; but I tell you it’s going to take a month of Sundays before I can approach an iron ladder with equanimity. And how well I’m going to get around on this sonofabitching ankle I don’t know.”

  “If Hilary’s so anxious to get you out of the way, wouldn’t that indicate that—?”

  “Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t. Hilary didn’t go down that ladder alone. In fact, he probably went down first, being more used to it, and Fennworth crawled hesitantly after. That’d make old Adam the last person to pass that rung while it was still safe. Turn here,” he added, as they came to the cross street where the Carruthers Little Theater stood.

  “What you should do,” Norman counseled as Fergus hobbled along the sidewalk, “is go to bed for the rest of today and get the weight off that ankle. It’ll just swell up worse if you go wandering around like the limping devil.”

  “The limping devil got around, didn’t he? And saw inside things and probed out secrets? Well, that’s what the limping O’Breen is up to.”

  Standing outside the door of the office, they heard strident voices within. Mark Andrews was saying, “All right. So you control the theater. That means four walls, a stage, a workshop, and some props. That isn’t what makes a theater; it’s the people working in it and the play they work with.”

  Fergus knocked. The door was opened by Hilary, who surveyed them with quiet hostility. “Why knock?” he asked. “You didn’t bother to at the workshop.”

  Mark Andrews turned to them, a new animation on his homely face. “Come in!” he cried. “Glad you’re here, Harker; you belong in on this. You too, O’Breen.”

  Adam Fennworth sat behind the desk, heavy and dominant, his face set with a sodden firmness. If he felt surprise at the appearance of Fergus, he concealed it magnificently. “Yes, gentlemen,” he urged. “Come in. Listen to Mr. Andrews’ farrago of high-fantastic nonsense, and lend me the aid of your good sense in talking him out of it.”

  Fergus limped into the room and found a chair. “What goes on, Andrews? Why all the hubbub?”

  “Mr. O’Breen …!” Fennworth murmured with solicitous tutting noises. “You have hurt your ankle?”

  “Nothing serious. Just a sprain. But thanks for your interest. Now what is all this?”

  “I’m calling a meeting tomorrow,” said Andrews tersely. “That’s all.”

  “Mr. Andrews,” Fennworth explained ponderously, “seems to be infected with some odd neosocialistic ideas. One might almost call it a doctrine of expropriation.”

  Andrews paid no attention. “Harker, do you know where I could find the Plunk girl? I called her home, and the landlady says she’s gone.”

  “Sorry. I had the same luck.”

  “Well, if you do run into her, tell her tomorrow at ten, here.”

  “The doors,” said Adam Fennworth, “will be locked.”

  “On the sidewalk, then, if we have to. But here tomorrow at ten.”

  Fennworth leaned forward over the desk. His bloated old body seemed to fill the room. “I warn you, gentlemen, that I shall do everything in my power to prevent this ridiculous meeting. Mr. Andrews, you must realize that this is a totally unwarranted arrogation of the rights of others, and I shall not sit by idly.”

  Hilary had been gazing out of the window, apparently heedless of the argument, but now he remarked over his shoulder, “I think you will, Adam.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes,” Hilary went on quietly. “Andrews has an idea here. I’d like to see it developed.”

  “You would?” Fennworth’s voice was at once dubious and defiant.

  “Yes. And wouldn’t you rather hear his ideas developed than mine?”

  Fennworth’s yellow eyes narrowed to little pouch-enveloped slits. “This room,” he said, “has become the fountain and origin of nonsense. More absurd words are spoken here in a minute than elsewhere in—”

  “All right,” said Fergus. “How’s about you and me leaving this room and talking over a little nonsense of my own somewhere else?”

  Fennworth let his eyebrows rise infinitesimally. “You too, Mr. O’Breen?”

  “Me too.”

  There was silence in the little room—silence, distrust, and confusion. Each man seemed to be playing his own game and quite at a loss as to how to answer the moves of the others. And now into this tense silence came the sharp ring of the telephone.

  Mark Andrews answered it. “Harker? He’s right here. Hold on a minute. For you. Metropolis Pictures.”

  “Swell,” said Fergus. “Maybe that Research job’s breaking.”

  “But I gave them my home phone number.” Puzzled, Norman took up the instrument.

  “Darling!” said a dearly familiar voice, and he forgot tensions and soaped ladders and limping devils and everything else in a quick hot wave of relief. “No please,” the voice hurried on. “Don’t say anything. I said it was Polly so whoever answered wouldn’t ask me questions. I don’t want the people at the theater to know. So you just nod and say ‘Yes’ and things as though this were a business call.”

  Norman dutifully nodded, but his “Yes” had a shaky quality frequently lacking in business conversations.

  “I’ve got to see you, darling.”

  “When?”

  “Not so much excitement, please. They’ll guess something. I want to see you tonight. And you mustn’t tell anybody, not even Fergus.”

  Norman said, “Yes.”

  “The beach is far enough away and you can get to it all right. Meet me at eight o’clock in front of the merry-go-round at Santa Monica. You can get there on a red car from Hollywood Boulevard.”

  “But—” Norman started.

  “Please, darling. Nothing now. Tonight at eight, and don’t tell anybody. You see, I—” Her voice stopped in mid-sentence. There was a click and the line was dead.

  Norman hung up and turned away. The four others were regarding him with intent curiosity.

  “Anything break?” Fergus asked eagerly.

  “They were just checking up again about that shorthand. Seemed to think I might have picked it up in the meanwihle. The job’s still up in the air.”

  Adam Fennworth rose. “I shall bid you good day, gentlemen. I have other and more sensible matters to attend to.”

  “You can’t get rid of things that easily,” Hilary observed warningly.

  “He’ll learn that tomorrow,” said Mark Andrews.

  “He’ll learn it,” said Fergus, “today. Mr. Fennworth, we’ve got a talk coming.”

  Fennworth started to hobble across the floor even more clumsily than usual. “I am so sorry about your ankle, Mr. O’Breen. You can appreciate now how much I suffer from my unfortunate limp. It causes one so much inconvenience, so much discomfort, so much pure awkwardness …”

  As he spoke, he lost his balance and lurched forward. As he struggled to right himself, his good foot came down solidly on Fergus’ ankle.

  The Irishman could not repress one yelp of pain, a shrill bansheelike cry. His face turned a deathly white; his lips twitched. He sat very still for a moment, swallowing hard and forcing his eyes to stay open. At last he said, “Drive me home, Norm.” His voice was as pallid as his face.

  “Such outrageous clumsiness!” Fennworth murmured. “How can I apologize, Mr. O’Breen? To inflict such pain on you—and you so young and curious.”

  Chapter 11

  Norman waited a long time in front of the merry-go-round—long enough for his anticipatory ardor to cool and his thoughts to turn back to the confused events of the day. The tuneless jangle of the calliope was like Fergus’ whistled jig. He wondered if the young Irishman still had the energy to whistle as he lay in bed.

  “The hell with that!” he had snorted when Norman had suggested a doctor. “He’ll wrap me up in a cast and keep me here, and I’ve got things to do. Just today to rest up—that’s all I’ll take off, and then I’m back on the spoor. But for today I’m more Mycroft than Sherlock. I’ll just lie
here and puzzle and fret at this damned thing till I’ve torn it open. And I can keep in touch with Andy by phone. Where can I reach you if he hears anything about your Sarah?”

  “I’ll be about and among,” said Norman. “I’ve got things to do myself. I’m afraid I won’t be reachable.”

  “God,” said Fergus, “have even you got secrets?”

  Now the jingle of the merry-go-round faded from Norman’s mind, and he found himself fretting and puzzling as earnestly as though he himself were helpless in bed with a crippled ankle. Sarah must be safe; that much was sure. Nothing dire had happened. But if she was still a free agent, why should she disappear in such huggermugger, unless …? He balked at this point of logical reasoning. The most cogent deduction could never convince him that Sarah was in any way guiltily involved in this mess. But what else could have motivated her disappearance? And why was she so late now? Or did that delay mean that she was not a free agent after all—that she had counted on escaping from some duress, but at the last moment …

  “Doing anything tonight, sugar?” a trollopy voice insinuated into his ear. “Want to have a little fun?”

  He turned to see a broadly grinning Sarah. “Would you have?” she demanded. “Would you have let a strange wench pick you up because I was a half-hour late?”

  “Of course,” he said, and kissed the grin.

  “Sir! And in front of all those wooden horses!”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. Doubts and suspicions could not exist in her presence; it was enough that she was there. He held her from him at arm’s length and surveyed her contentedly.

  She had apparently spent the day at the beach. Under a light wool coat she wore only a scant sun suit, and the tip of her nose was pink from sun. Her uncombed hair was a ruffled aureole. She was alive and dear. She was Sarah. But there was something strange about her, something different. He could not place this difference; he could only sense that in some indefinable way she had altered, and definitely for the better.

  “It’s good,” he said simply.

  She bent forward, nuzzled her face against his neck, and looked up smiling. “Isn’t it though!”